


T.S. Eliot: Master Poet & Seminal Fan Fiction Author

by LilacFree



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Crack, Essays, Other, bad_scholarship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-31
Updated: 2010-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-10 21:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacFree/pseuds/LilacFree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A critical overview of the Doctor Who fan fiction of T.S. Eliot.  Contains a lot of quoted bits which honest to Goshen were written by T. S. Eliot and not me. I can't help it if the man was a major fanboy.  This essay was originally archived at Teaspoon, but was removed when they eliminated their essay category.</p>
            </blockquote>





	T.S. Eliot: Master Poet & Seminal Fan Fiction Author

Many people are not aware that T. S. Eliot was very fond of the classic British television series 'Doctor Who'. Unfortunately, Eliot died in early 1965 and thus was able to see with his own eyes only a few of the first season William Hartnell episodes. However, 'Doctor Who' was a major influence in Eliot's work, especially his great opus 'Four Quartets' which is not only one of the masterpieces of modern poetry but is the first ever piece of Doctor Who fan fiction, having been published in parts from 1936 to 1942. While 'Four Quartets' has received due attention for its literary merits, until now no critic has touched on its merits as a piece of fan fiction. How, one may ask, can a piece written in 1935 be influenced by a television show first aired in 1963? A close examination of 'Four Quartets' shows that Eliot's thinking was in line with modern concepts of physics as they relate to the fourth dimension. It is possible that his instinctive understanding of this subject allowed the poet's vision to pierce the veil of time after the manner of his favorite Time Lord.

Time present and time past  
Are both perhaps present in time future,  
And time future contained in time past.

 

In the opening lines of the first Quartet, 'Burnt Norton', Eliot makes it clear that this fic is meant to interlace plot threads from different eras, thus making him also the first author of a multi-era Doctor Who fic. The principal incarnation of the Doctor being featured in this fiction is not made expressly clear; however, it does resemble some of the Eight Doctor Adventure novels in its complexity and inclusion of esoteric physics.*

Verse II contains a description of the TARDIS.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud  
Clot the bedded axle-tree.  
The trilling wire in the blood  
Sings below inveterate scars  
Appeasing long forgotten wars.

 

This is obviously the TARDIS of one of the later Doctors as it has a more organic feel. It may even be the Ninth Doctor's TARDIS. Later in the same verse he also elegantly describes the exterior of the TARDIS.

Yet the enchainment of past and future  
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,  
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation  
Which flesh cannot endure.

 

This is quite clear: the 'weakness of the changing body' refers to the broken chameleon circuit; 'Protects mankind from heaven and damnation' refers to its function of making the mysterious and wonderful TARDIS blend unnoticed into its surroundings. Thrillingly, he hints at the idea that the exterior of the TARDIS is in essence an artifact of its ability to traverse the time vortex and if one truly saw the TARDIS as it is the viewer would not be able to endure the sight. This is consistent with canon, as in the episode 'The Parting Of The Ways' where looking into the vortex nearly kills Rose Tyler and does kill the Doctor himself.

At the very end of 'Burnt Norton', Eliot mischievously complains about the cliffhanger/reprise pattern of episodes. Possibly he found this way of teasing the viewer with an artificially tense ending then supplying expository material in the next episode to be a trite story-telling device.

Quick now, here, now, always–  
Ridiculous the waste sad time  
Stretching before and after.

 

It is all the more humorous for he is in fact ending the first Quartet with these lines! The light touch at this point is welcome, and Eliot proves he is a true fan by not scorning the humorous element of 'Doctor Who'.

The first Quartet is largely concerned with establishing scenes in the TARDIS. In the second Quartet, Eliot introduces the historical plot thread. Instead of merely giving a year, he uses language to establish an archaic mood.

The association of man and woman  
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie–  
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.

 

The plot in this era bears some resemblance to the Fifth Doctor episode 'The Visitation' as it concerns aliens landing in England's past.

Thunder rolled by the rolling stars  
Simulates triumphal cars  
Deployed in constellated wars  
Scorpion fights against the Sun  
Until the Sun and Moon go down  
Comets weep and Leonids fly  
Hunt the heavens and the plains  
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring  
The world to that destructive fire  
Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

 

Clearly this is a job for the Doctor! He has to save the world while dealing with some legacy of Gallifrey. It is possible that this is an Alternate Universe fic (another first for Eliot!) and that this is a Ninth Doctor or later story where Gallifrey exists. The machinations of the High Council are referenced in such lines as the following:

Had they deceived us  
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,  
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?  
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,  
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets  
Useless in the darkness into which they peered

 

This is a typical rant of the Doctor against his stodgy Gallifreyan peers and demonstrates Eliot's mastery of characterization. The Time Lords seem to be requiring the Doctor to perform some delicate intervention of an unsavory nature. We feel the Doctor's pain as his natural compassion is stymied by the necessity of protecting the integrity of the Timestream. Note the reference to his classic question mark symbol.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel  
That questions the distempered part;  
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel  
The sharp compassion of the healer's art  
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

 

In the Third Quartet, the intensity of the plot increases along with the danger of the Doctor's situation. The cloister bell rings as only happens in the most dire circumstances.

And under the oppression of the silent fog  
The tolling bell  
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried  
Ground swell, a time  
Older than the time of chronometers

 

The end of the third Quartet contains a splendid scene of defiance by the Doctor who is faced with seemingly impossible odds.

Here the past and future  
Are conquered, and reconciled,  
Where action were otherwise movement  
Of that which is only moved  
And has in it no source of movement–  
Driven by daemonic, chthonic  
Powers. And right action is freedom  
From past and future also.  
For most of us, this is the aim  
Never here to be realised;  
Who are only undefeated  
Because we have gone on trying

 

Note that explicitly in these lines, and implicitly in others, Eliot raises the possibility that the antagonists of his story are Lovecraftian style alien entities. While Eliot lived contemporaneously with H. P. Lovecraft, the subject of Lovecraft's influence on Eliot's fan fiction is rightly reserved for separate study.

In the climactic sequence in the fourth Quartet, the Doctor encounters another Time Lord who may be one of his other incarnations, the Master, or perhaps even the Valeyard.

I caught the sudden look of some dead master  
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled  
Both one and many; in the brown baked features  
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost  
Both intimate and unidentifiable.  
So I assumed a double part, and cried  
And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'

 

Analysis of these lines hints that one of the characters involved here is the Fourth Doctor. Note the punning reference 'brown baked'. The intonation of the quoted dialogue 'What! Are you here?' sounds closest to the style of Tom Baker's Doctor.

The other character departs in a TARDIS, thus clenching the identification as a Time Lord.

The day was breaking. In the disfigured street  
He left me, with a kind of valediction,  
And faded on the blowing of the horn.

 

Finally, some may wish to read the last verse of the fourth Quartet as a retelling of the climax of 'The Parting Of The Ways'.

And all shall be well and  
All manner of thing shall be well  
When the tongues of flame are in-folded  
Into the crowned knot of fire  
And the fire and the rose are one.

 

Indeed, the entire work of fan fiction is deliberately rich in language and concept so that it may almost be read as a 'Choose Your Own Doctor Who Adventure' story. 'Shippers may not feel particularly catered to as Eliot only uses a romantic theme in the second Quartet. However, those who love 'Doctor Who' are sure to find in this great poem many entertaining insights into the character of the Doctor and the fictional world he inhabits.

Unless Eliot was a Time Lord. Or even the Doctor. But that's an AU essay.

 

*Interested readers may wish to refer to Gray Woodland's story 'Nyssa's End' as an online example of a piece which shares these attributes. One may also detect some resemblance in the plot line, which I ascribe to the genius of both authors.

**Author's Note:**

> I reread 'Four Quartets' regularly and it is still one of the best Doctor Who fan fiction pieces I've ever read.


End file.
